In an exclusive interview with AFP in Damascus — his first since the alleged April 4 attack prompted a US airstrike on Syrian forces — Bashar al-Assad said his army had given up all its chemical weapons and that Syrian military power was not affected by the US strike.

Updated

02/08/2017 - 10:30am

Amnesty International’s new report “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison, Syria” alleges that Syrian authorities systematically executed as many as 13,500 detainees at one jail outside Damascus from 2011 to 2015, and that the killings are probably still happening.

President Obama is falling short on his pledge to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of September. But some Syrians have already been granted visas and are living here, not as refugees, but as visiting professors.

A young Syrian boy vanished from a hospital in Belgrade a month ago while on the refugee trail. The story sparked a social media campaign using the hashtag #FindAzam. BBC journalist John Sweeney explains how he found Azam and his uncle.

The embattled Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, appeared in Moscow on Tuesday night, for his first trip outside of his country since the uprising against him began in 2011. It’s a sign of his dependence on Russian military assistance. And it seems Vladimir Putin summoned Assad to get a sense of how flexible he is on his role in any political settlement or transition in Syria. Syria's secular elite shares a deep comfort level with the arrival of Russian forces.

After a violent crackdown against Arab Spring protesters in Syria, the government is using its hospitals to find and isolate dissidents. To get the treatment they need, they're having to go to independent, underground, make-shift hospitals.

A photo of three pioneering women doctors has been circulating in social media -- but they're not wearing white lab coats. They're wearing culturally significant dress and they represent the first women doctors from their countries, back in the 1800s.

Like many homeowners, Diana Darke simply fell in love with her house and couldn't pass it up. But the British author's dream home was in Damascus, now caught in the Syrian civil war. Yet Darke refuses to give up on her house — or Syria itself.

It's difficult not to be moved by some of the images coming out this week of one particular district in Damascus. In Yarmouk, a sea of grim faces stare out from two rows of bombed out buildings. This section of the Syrian capital, after being under siege for months, has become a man-made disaster zone.

In an exclusive interview with AFP in Damascus — his first since the alleged April 4 attack prompted a US airstrike on Syrian forces — Bashar al-Assad said his army had given up all its chemical weapons and that Syrian military power was not affected by the US strike.

President Obama is falling short on his pledge to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of September. But some Syrians have already been granted visas and are living here, not as refugees, but as visiting professors.